Category Archives: Music

The prospects are fair

In case you’re in the vicinity of Cambridge, Minnesota, I’ll be playing Viking at the Isanti County Fair there tomorrow. The event goes on until Midnight, I guess, but I don’t think I’ll be there that long. I’ll have books to sell and sign.

Unless my car breaks down. Or I have a heart attack. Or fall down a well, or something. You never know.

For your Friday treat, here’s something delightful I think I haven’t posted here before — though what do I know? It’s Sissel singing “Sukiyaki.” A bizarre fusion of cultures here — a Norwegian girl in a folk costume singing a Japanese song in Norwegian. But you can’t deny it works. She was born to sing this song.

I suppose this counts as cultural appropriation, and is therefore evil. But if she sang it in Japanese, that would be cultural appropriation too. In fact, how can you avoid the conclusion that learning any foreign language at all is cultural appropriation? Hey you, liberal, trying to be multicultural by learning Spanish! Who gave you permission to plunder somebody else’s language?

Happy Independence Day!

For some reason I’m in the mood for some jingoistic, flag-waving music today. I bet you didn’t even know “The Stars and Stripes Forever” had lyrics. Well, here they are, courtesy of some Barber Shoppers.

Memorial Day

When it comes to Memorial Day, I always seem to perambulate back to “The Mansions of the Lord,” because it just gets me right here. This version includes a lot of Ronald Reagan, so if you don’t care for that, there are other blogs in the web. Have a good day.

I want to post a photo from Saturday at Fort Snelling, but that will have to wait because the picture file is taking forever to appear in Dropbox.

I just finished a big translation job, and I have another smaller one I need to get at today. And that’s good. Because I’m a hard-working man with a vibrant life, not a fat old bachelor with odd hobbies, as I might appear to some.

To all survivors of fallen heroes, may the Lord be with you, today and every day.

Copyediting Stereophile Magazine

Vintage editor Richard Lehnert tells something of his story in this three page web article on his years at Stereophile magazine. (via Prufrock News)

Larry would hand me endless accordion-pleated foldings of copy, printed in some knockoff of Palatino by a clacking daisy-wheel printer on a single endless roll of paper. I would take them home, mark them up in red pencil, and then, if delivering them after or before office hours, drive in my ’66 VW bug from my abuelita hovel on Alicia Street, in the Barrio, to Early Street, and leave them in the Stereophile mailbox—until one day four long articles bleeding red with my crabbed edits vanished from that mailbox, no doubt seized by an irate postperson, and I had to do them over from scratch.

A short pause for the Long Ships

Today I got a little translation work to do. Not a lot, but there are reasons to hope things may pick up a bit.

And I did a little housework.

And I have nothing to write about. I’m blank. In lieu of an actual intellectual contribution to the world wide web, I offer the opening titles from a truly mediocre Viking movie, The Long Ships, with Richard Widmark.

This film, beyond its general inaccuracy and implausibility, commits the great sin of being unworthy of its source material — the fine novel The Long Ships, by Fran Gunnar Bengtsson.

You may note that the ship’s rudder is (properly) on the starboard side in some shots, and occasionally on the port side. This is the result of a cheat on the film editors’ parts. They just reversed the print. For some reason.

I owned a 45 rpm vinyl disc of this song — a cousin had it and didn’t want it, and she gave it to me. I think I listened to it once — somehow I left it sitting a car window and it melted.

Only the first of many disappointments connected with this movie.

The need for Christian artists

Andrew Collins writes in his article, “How Art Moved Me Beyond the Cliché,” about overcoming a blasé familiarity with Scripture. “I recently read through the Psalms—one song every morning or evening. But when I got to Psalm 23, something happened. I read through it in a minute or two, and not a single substantive thought went through my head. When I reached the end, my mind was blank.

“Why? Because it’s Psalm 23! Everyone knows it. I’ve probably had it memorized since I was 7 years old. Over the years, the psalm has dissolved, for me, into a rote sequence of words. What a shame. Gratefully, I remember Jon Foreman’s song ‘House of God Forever.'” 

I’ve had a similar revitalizing through Michael Card’s songs from the Psalms in his album, The Way of Wisdom. His renderings of Psalm 23 and 139 have stuck with me for twenty years.

A Blessed New Year

What do you know? I found a video of Sissel singing “Auld Lang Syne” that I hadn’t seen/heard before. I would have preferred they not just repeat one verse twice, but the music is lovely.

Reading left to right: Placido Domingo, Sissel Kyrkjebo, and the late Charles Aznavour. From 1994.

A blessed new year to you and yours.

‘Hark! the Herald Angels Sing’

It’s still the Christmas season — till Epiphany. I feel I haven’t heard this Christmas hymn enough this year. Sissel, of course.